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So I guess I’m a politician now, which is just bizarre.
For those of you who missed it I declared that I am running from Congress over the weekend. No website up or anything just yet–soon–although I do have a cool new YouTube channel you should check out.
But I am apparently the ONLY candidate in the country currently who is concerned about robocalls– or at least, the only one concerned enough to actually talk about what the FCC is up to.
Now to be clear, I support the FCC cutting regulation–huge fan of it– but the Commission needs to be SMART about what regulation is plans to cut. And I’m not so sure its current plan is really passing the smart test.
Specifically, in a new NPRM to be voted on by the Commission next week the FCC is considering ENDING the TCPA’s internal DNC rules.
This would mean a company could theoretically keep making marketing calls to consumers even after they ask for the calls to stop!
Wait what?
Why would the FCC even consider such a crazy rule?
Well the Trump administration has put them in a bit of a bind– in order to enact any new regulations the Commission is supposed to “delete, delete, delete” 10 regulations for every one they pass.
And that’s tough to do.
So they had to delete something and this is what they came up with. Its all right here in paragraphs 97-101: FCC NPRM
The thinking appears to be “hey, we have this awesome DNC registry nowadays and a bunch of other robocall rules so…who needs an internal DNC list.”
Now the FCC isn’t wrong that you can always put your name on the DNC list and marketers can’t call you using certain kinds of regulated technology, but the internal DNC list helps a ton too–especially protecting consumers against SMS messages that may not be covered by the regular DNC rules and that most courts find aren’t covered by the TCPA’s anti-robocall rules either.
Plus the idea the FCC would bless marketers continuing to blast consumer phones after they say “stop” is kind of shocking regardless. We are often reminded that robocalls are the number one consumer complaint to the FCC– why would the commission want to encourage the proliferation of unwanted calls and texts by suggesting they are “legal” in some narrow sense?
Speaking as the President of Responsible Enterprises Against Consumer Harassment (R.E.A.C.H.) I can say responsible companies should never adopt practices that ignore consumer contact preferences regardless of the legality of the practice– but there are plenty of bad actors out there who will not be so restrained.
On the other hand this new change should theoretically cut down on the number of abusive TCPA lawsuits that get filed, but Queenie and I suspect the opposite will actually end up being true.
Specifically this will create a trap for small businesses who don’t understand the broader contours of the law and will simply here “I don’t have to honor stop requests anymore.”
That will lead to MASSIVE consequences as the Commission correctly points out that other portions of the TCPA will operate to prevent many calls to consumers, even without the IDNC rules– and that will lead to an avalanche of unexpected new lawsuits.
Eesh.
So more unwanted calls. AND more unwanted lawsuits.
Its all bad.
Let’s hope the Commission backs off this part of the NPRM.
As we shall see, however, there are other parts I am VERY in favor of. More on that soon.
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